Claudio Castagnoli vs. Eddie Kingston, CHIKARA Creatures From The Tar Swamp (3/13/2011)

This is their first singles meeting since their wonderful 2009 trilogy that foreshadowed this entire BDK business. Before the match, a nice recap of their 2009 feud and BDK era interactions airs, along with a short vignette of Castagnoli LAYING DOWN THE LAW to the BDK that failure would no longer be tolerated. 

The big catch here is that this time, it’s in New York. Despite that BDK referee Derek Sabato is somehow assigned to the call, it’s still in Eddie’s home and Eddie works so much on emotion that it might be the only thing that matters. To really play to that idea of the home field advantage, Kingston comes through the people to attack Castagnoli before the match. Eddie has a blast beating the hell out of his former roommate in front of two hundred or so of his people, but maybe revels in it just a little too much. While the interference of Del Rey doesn’t quite do the trick, Tim Donst gets more involved to help Castagnoli finally shut Eddie down. 

The beating from Castagnoli is, of course, wonderful. Throughout this BDK run, he struck a perfect balance between casual and very occasionally sadistic. He’s so physically dominant over everyone else in CHIKARA who opposes him, but whenever he’s pushed, he’s so insulted by the idea of it that he lashes out and simply becomes cruel. This isn’t quite the best example of this, but it’s another of many. What was below the surface in 2009 that only Eddie Kingston saw is on fully display here, with Castagnoli no longer needing to be pushed to do horrible things or needing the pretense to do something like a Gutwrench Suplex on a steel ramp. It’s such a wonderful Eddie Kingston story. He was right and he exposed who Claudio really is. The problem is that he has to deal with a totally unburdened Claudio Castagnoli now, without the advantage from 2009 of Eddie going to places Claudio wouldn’t go so immediately. Eddie is even better on his end. He’s always clawing or scraping or spitting in a sort of furious and impotent rage, daring Claudio to keep going. Anything less would be far too civilized.

Like with any big CHIKARA main event in this golden age, the strength of it is the booking. When Eddie finally has enough and headbutts Sabato and waves Bryce Remsburg down from commentary, the crowd erupts, because he finally has a shot. It’s not at all dissimilar to how Quackenbush and Jigsaw were able to liberate the Campeonatos des Parejas in December, the only other big non-Cibernetico loss for the BDK in recent memory. There’s a million little wonderful sells in this, primarily from Kingston. He’s the master at taking something on a razor thin edge between good and bad like a fighting spirit kickout or a no sell and making it not only good, but making it feel real as hell. This never becomes the epic of their 2009 series, but based on the many things both men are capable of doing in 2011, that feels like a conscious choice. It’s a little uncooperative, ugly, and again, just kind of realer than before. Tursas tries to get involved too, when Castagnoli is beaten down, AND KINGSTON GOES TO THE TOP ROPE TO DIVE ON HIM. It’s ugly as hell, but effective, and entirely necessary. A perfect Eddie Kingston thing to do. Sabato’s recovered by now though, and once again, time has run out for Eddie Kingston. He takes the fair official out, and involves himself again. Tim Donst is able to give Castagnoli a large steel chain, and he totally wipes King out with a chain-wrapped Shotgun European Uppercut for the win. Stunningly, Eddie Kingston lost something that meant the world to him. 

Go into this expecting the same kind of bombfest as the 2009 trilogy and you will be let down. I was the first time I saw this. Go into this with an open mind and the realization that this is something totally different, and you will be much happier with it, I expect. The biggest flaw is that it’s very clearly setting up Kingston’s ultimate victory in a final match. Given Castagnoli’s unceremonious exist from the big tournament later in the year, it just makes sense that the 12 Large Summit was actually going to come down to the final Eddie Kingston vs. Claudio Castagnoli match. The way it turned out is, to me, the better of the two paths at the fork in the road, but it explains why their last match is such a downer, and very atypical of CHIKARA. 

This is more for CHIKARA completionists or for huge Eddie Kingston fans (as if there isn’t an overlap), but it’s a wonderful fight either way.

***1/4

Eddie Kingston vs. El Generico, CHIKARA Chaos In A Sea of Lost Souls (1/23/2011)

As usual, Eddie Kingston’s pretaped promo does a perfect job setting the scene. In 2010, Eddie Kingston got to wrestle a lot of his heroes, but it didn’t matter to him and he blames the way Claudio Castagnoli has evaded him and the war with the BDK is still going on, despite his victories, and states a goal to compartmentalize that and not let him hold himself back like that. New year, new King. This match is an attempt to get back on the right track, but also to send a message, with an offhand little remark that he doesn’t respect El Generico. 

God damnit, Eddie. 

Before The Mad King, there was The War King. There was a promo back in late 2008, where Eddie Kingston said that he was someone who needed a war. Next to a few real special Eddie Kingston promos, it’s something that always stuck in my head when I thought about him. He’s that type of person. Outside of a fictional combat sport, it’s just someone you’d describe as “driven” or “goal oriented”, but professional wrestling attracts the sort of people who take that and turn it into obsessive and self destructive behavior. They don’t make them more endearingly self destructive than Eddie Kingston. Over the last few years, he’s turned honest competition with a guy like Hallowicked into a sprawling war and created wars out of the simple ascents of new generation graduates like The Colony or Lince Dorado. Just because he was correct about Claudio Castagnoli doesn’t mean it wasn’t also an issue he blew up because he needs conflict to feel normal. It’s the sort of major character flaw that’s both always held Eddie Kingston back from greater achievement and made him one of the great relatable heroes in professional wrestling history. We love Eddie because in one way or another, we are Eddie.

For an Eddie Kingston trying to move past this and compartmentalize his personal issues, El Generico is a perfect contrast. That’s not explicitly stated, but I’m not NOT going to read into any possible detail. Generico hasn’t been in CHIKARA since 2009, and his major issues didn’t happen in CHIKARA, but some ninety nine percent of people who will see this match know about El Generico and Kevin Steen. Through that, Generico was still able to achieve other things and not let it ever get him down. It comes with the territory of being the greatest babyface of a generation. These aren’t similar characters exactly, but it’s a great booking because El Generico is the sort of character Eddie Kingston simply is not, no matter how hard he might try to be. Eddie Kingston is real, and El Generico is aspirational.

The match is a delightful little thing. It’s a semi-main event level match that is decidedly not a big production, but that provides the sort of space for the little touches to stand out more. Credit to El Generico, who can do all of these big things, but he’s here to provide that contrast and to be that sort of measuring stick. His job in this match is to simply exist, and be great in a lower key way. He is. He’s there, and as a result, this can be the Eddie Kingston show. He’s so goddamned good in this. Everything he does is so interesting to me, every choice he makes is the most engaging of all possible ones. The way he’s very professional (or the way he does his best to imitate that that might theoretically look like) to start, but then lights up when Generico returns a slap. The way it constantly feels like he’s trying to not just beat the shit out of Generico whenever he fights back a little too hard. The way he sells minor damage of bigger shots, like holding his ankle instead of his neck after the Exploder into the turnbuckles. My favorite little thing Eddie did here was trying all sorts of fancier big moves in this, like he wasn’t really sure how to operate in a match that was simply competitive, and not life or death. 

El Generico then did him a favor by almost killing him, and making it something a little closer to life and/or death. 

Kingston’s selling is remarkable stuff, as always. The best way to sell severe neck damage is by just not being able to move an arm, and Eddie has some of the better nerve damage selling ever. This is one more entry to the genre. The difference between these two is that Generico can compartmentalize and Eddie has trouble with it, but it’s Eddie’s quicker access to some sort of animalistic nature that saves his ass. Generico gives him time to recover and stand back up in the corner to keep it clean, but at that point, Eddie is fighting solely for survival. He’s more desperate and vicious as a result than El Generico ever could be, or ever will be. A repeat Helluva Kick gets narrowly avoided before Kingston manages a rare Backdrop Suplex into the turnbuckles and then out to the middle. Two Backfists to the Future follow that, and Eddie gets a moderate upset. 

Eddie Kingston finally gets a big singles win that’s eluded him for a little bit now, only able to get there when Generico gives him the sort of war he needs. A fascinating character study wrapped up in fifteen minutes or so of real cool stuff too.

***1/4

Eddie Kingston vs. The Rotation, WXW 16 Carat Gold 2020 Night Two (3/7/2020)

This was a quarterfinals match in the 2020 16 Carat Gold tournament.

Eddie Kingston is one of the greatest wrestlerrs of all time. The Rotation is not. The Rotation is nothing, but he is a nothing wrestler against Eddie Kingston, and that makes all the difference. The crowd really likes this fourteen year old for some reason, and he is so out of his depth that he sells his own hand after throwing chop because he has presumably never hit another person before. He is a decent enough athlete and is at least moderately trained, so Eddie Kingston can have a great match with him. He’s mean as hell, but he takes some great bumps for the kid and makes him look like he might actually be something before it’s over. Rotation only succeeds through the air, so he keeps going to the top rope. It works very well until a veteran like Eddie, used to guys like this, sees the play coming again. He hurls him off the top with tremendous abandon with a Uranage before winning with the Backfist to the Future.

One could interpret this as a tremendous performance as he abuses the local and makes him look like he might have a shot before violently shutting it down. One could also interpret this as Eddie Kingston thrown off by the crowd and battling his own natural instinct to professionally self immolate before overcoming and shutting down this annoying little twerp trying to take advantage of him. The latter is the correct option. Rotation is very likely the worst wrestler to be in a great match in 2020, as he’s still so young, but there is nothing Eddie Kingston can’t do.

***

Eddie Kingston vs. Erick Stevens, AIW Baby It’s 2 Cold Outside (12/28/2019)

While Stevens has a storied history a little over a decade ago, he may as well be a new wrestler this year in his limited engagement run. An indie guy in great shape who throws a lot of elbows, chops, and head drops and who also dabbles in submissions isn’t nearly as interesting or charming to me as the meatier weirdo in a mohawk doing power moves in a world that didn’t embrace that as much, and it certainly isn’t the expectation a lot of us had going into this. As a result, a lot of his work this year has been a culture shock as a result and/or just sort of there when combined with the natural rust that a guy’s just gonna have after spending most of the decade doing other stuff. Still, the reality half of the expectations vs. reality split screen isn’t all that bad, and this is the best he’s done all year. While he’s good in this, this is is greater primarily because this has Eddie Kingston in there, and Eddie Kingston fucking rules. Stevens does a little tribute in an early chop exchange with an Eddie Kingston style delayed sell by doubling over for a moment, a sell that Eddie’s made a lot with over the years, only for Eddie to top it later on with this absolutely gorgeous adrenaline-wearing-off sell.

That’s the highlight, but the match is full of those great little things. Stevens doesn’t offer me anything like that, but he hits hard and executes better than ever in this run, so I’ll echo initial sentiments over this being his best match since the return. It’s not fair to call it an Eddie Kingston carryjob, because it would have still fallen just short if he couldn’t hold up his end, but it’s fair to call this a match that I’ll remember as a great Eddie Kingston performance. Stevens overwhems him at the end not with heavier hands, but with more diverse striking, going to elbows too at the end while Eddie stuck to chops only. He follows up a gnarly elbow with a Northern Lights Bomb for the win.

***

Eddie Kingston vs. Sara Del Rey, CHIKARA The Great Escape (7/28/2012)

This was for Eddie Kingston’s CHIKARA Grand Championship title.

I didn’t intend on writing about this here. Really didn’t, hand to God. Some reviews go on a forum, some go on the blog. Usually length has something to do with it, but I try to put the stuff that matters to me or that gets something out of me up here, and not a lot of the 2012 CHIKARA stuff I’ve been watching has achieved that. To be honest, none of it has. Eddie Kingston’s been one of the only good things in the company at this point, and even he’s felt somewhat diminished in the hangover of one of the most emotional title wins of all time at HIGH NOON the previous year. Still, he feels like a star on the level that nobody else in CHIKARA really does anymore outside of Mike Quackenbush, and outside of his opponent here.

On that note, this is Sara Del Rey’s last weekend in CHIKARA. It’s not her last match in the company for some reason, and it’s not her last independent match (and match period) as ROH wasted her yet again on a mixed tag team popcorn match teaming with Eddie Edwards against Mike Bennett and Maria Kanellis. That was a decent little match and a fun watch, but this is the one that feels like a culmination of everything she’s ever done. Sara Del Rey is the ultimate case of someone so far ahead of their time that it became a detriment. It obviously wasn’t entirely true all of the time, as there’s so much SHIMMER I haven’t seen, but for years whenever she fought another woman, Sara Del Rey seemed so far above everyone else she was wrestling. There wasn’t much debate about who the best womens wrestler on the indies was, because everyone knew. There were women around her who came close, and a few of the two thousand Daizee Haze singles matches were actually very good, but she’s someone who really could have been so much more if she came along five years later. A remarkable skillset as her better work showed, but as a result of the times and places save for the last year or so of her career when CHIKARA finally put her under the spotlight, she doesn’t have the resume that her skillset suggests she ought to.

Save for a very entertaining run through the 2008 Ted Petty Invitational, CHIKARA was the only place that really let Sara Del Rey wrestle her actual peers. It didn’t always turn out great, due to so much of that being in the BDK storyline and having to team with a sickly seeming Daizee Haze, or having the less than stellar opponents the crop up here and there in a fed/training school hybrid, or just the sorts of weird booking calls that handcuff people in CHIKARA from time to time. There was always something there though, and over the year coming into this, she was finally cut loose and allowed to work. She got to face and defeat Claudio Castagnoli, El Generico, Aja Kong, Meiko Satomura, and was the survivor of the 2011 Torneo Cibernetico, and every time she had a real chance, it delivered.

So, even if we only had this one final expression of what she could really do in a main event title match, they made the absolute most of it. Eddie Kingston’s had some fun title defenses, but to some extent, they all felt somewhat restrained. Eddie Kingston is great enough at all the fun little things as well as the big dramatic gestures that just about anything he touches and gets to control is going to deliver, but they were delivering in small ways, and felt more like great smaller matches that happened to be for a title.

This is an equally small show as any of them, but this is a big match effort. It’s one of the best examples in independent wrestling history of gigantic matches in small rooms. They had twenty plus minutes and they used it nearly perfectly. Sara outwrestles Kingston at the start and seizes upon his hesitancy to really lay it in by beating the crap out of him once she notices it. Eddie has a hurt right shoulder, and Sara goes after it when she needs to really make a point. She shit talks him, repeatedly asking if he thinks she’s joking now after an offhand comment Eddie makes after one shot. As you would have come to expect with any familiarity towards his work, Eddie’s so good at facially selling his frustration with not being able to do better, especially when Sara stomps in at the shoulder. Like always with King, he seems as mad at himself as he is at anything outside of himself.

He turns it up a little to do better, working the neck after a rare knee trembler off the middle rope. He returns every single favor with a receipt, and gets nastier and nastier. Eddie keeps selling the arm in little ways, and Sara goes after it whenever she needs an opening, and has to go there to make her initial comeback. They defy the setting and manage several really really big nearfalls, as Sara struggles for things and gets them later on for these select nearfalls that I completely bit on. I don’t bite on nearfalls that happen in matches I’m watching live, but these two got me to do it on a match that’s seven years old and change. It’s not just because of what happened in the match, so much as it is the retroactive frustration with a scene that so often failed to properly utilize such a remarkable talent, and the bittersweet joy of seeing her finally achieve something like this when the clock was seconds away from midnight, but I wanted this for Sara Del Rey so bad. I didn’t go into the match expecting a whole lot, but they absolutely got me. They completely got me, and I don’t know why I’m surprised that Eddie Kingston vs. Sara Del Rey under these circumstances got me like this.

Of course, that feel good moment doesn’t happen. It’s not just yet time for CHIKARA’s first female Grand Champion. Like Moses, Sara doesn’t get to enter the promised land, just to show the path and to guide everyone else there. Eddie had been denied these kinds of moments for years, and while he doesn’t appear to take any real glee in denying them to others now, he’s certainly not just letting go of it as he grows more and more used to actually being on top. Eddie guts it out through the minor injury and hits a few Backfists to the Future, with the busted arm lessening the impact so it takes more. He lands one to the back of the damaged neck at the end, and then disappointingly gets a Northern Sliding D to win. Not a horrible finishing move, but the match had worked itself to the point of having earned something more, so it felt abrupt in the moment. A real jarring and sudden loss. Maybe that was the point.

Incredible match. Sara Del Rey’s finest hour, one of Eddie Kingston’s all around best performances, and a really special match. One of the best intergender matches ever, and one of the last things CHIKARA ever did that really grabbed me like this. Eddie has a real long run with the title as its first champion, but if there was ever a time for a “thank you” win, it was here. Eddie Kingston doesn’t do happy endings though, if not on the way up, than certainly not when he’s actually on top.

One of the most gripping matches I’ve seen recently. Must see stuff.

****

Claudio Castagnoli vs. Eddie Kingston, CHIKARA Three Fisted Tales (11/22/2009)

In an attempt to end the feud, this is a Respect Match, in which the loser must publicly state their respect for the winner.

Like the previous two matches, a pretaped backstage promo gets us where we need to go. Eddie Kingston says no matter what the result is, he knows now who Claudio really is, even if nobody else does. He was right last time he got personal (Chris Hero) and he’ll be right again. Eddie Kingston began the feud six months prior mad about the perceived lack of respect from Castagnoli. It seemed like an overreaction at the time but the first match showed there was something there, and the second match confirmed it. Claudio began the feud without an issue with Eddie before it became about solidifying his superiority over CHIKARA when Eddie called it into doubt. To say they respect the other man is more of a loss for Claudio than it will be for Kingston, based on where they began, but it’d absolutely kill Eddie too, as he’s seen his respect for Claudio disintegrate since that first match.

There’s no longer any pretense to this. They begin by rushing each other. Claudio starts off with the Ricola Bomb, following a match opening Bicycle Kick. He’d never hit it before on Kingston, and while it obviously doesn’t end the match, it’s as good of a show of force as anything. The match starts off disrespectful and only breaks down from there. Claudio gets more and more disrespectful, more than he’s ever been. He’s never been a guy who throws slaps, but he throws a lot of slaps at Eddie, and it’s a slight not unnoticed by a guy in Eddie Kingston who already imagines enough of them as it is.

It’s not just a nasty match because of the hard shots and mean offense, but it’s uncooperative in the best way. They choke each other in transition and constantly shove each other’s arms out of the way when they try and cover up. There’s rarely a piece of offense here that isn’t fought for. Moves are blocked and/or countered, but in ways that aren’t pretty at all. Kingston swatting Claudio down out of the air by the side of the neck when he tries his turning European Uppercut. They both catch chops or punches and muscle each other into throws. It’s one of the most purely hateful matches I can remember seeing recently.

Claudio again dominates because of his physical advantage. It taked Eddie at least twice the work to get where Claudio can get. Eddie busts his ass and tries his best, but all Claudio really needs is an opening to shut him down. Eddie wants it too bad, and breaks out the big guns. Claudio finally shows the true colors Eddie’s been talking about when eh cuts off a rally on the outside by throwing a CHIKARA student doing ring crew work at Eddie to open him up for a kick outside and the Alpamare Waterslide on the apron. Eddie doesn’t land another offensive move after that, but he keeps kicking out. I’m not a guy who typically gets big into kickouts and nearfalls and runs like this, but they got me. They had me pumping my fist when Eddie kicked out of the first Ricola Bomb after he made it back inside, and after big move after big move. It’s something that could venture into ridiculousness, but it never does, because Eddie never portrays it as anything more than the most stubborn man in the world refusing to stay down until he physically can’t get up in time. Claudio gets insulting with it at a point too, using Eddie’s own short range Lariat, but it’s that bicycle knee again and a disgusting Rolling European Uppercut that finally just knocks the breath out of Kingston long enough for a three count.

Beautiful match and a testament to what you can do when you actually tell stories from match to match. Over three matches, we saw a relationship completely break down, and a double turn essentially take place. Eddie brought something mean and ugly out of Claudio after the upset victory, but it’s here that he’s ultimately right. He’s right, and he loses. Claudio was confronted with the idea that maybe he actually can’t beat this guy anymore, and took a shortcut. It didn’t give him the win immediately, but it cut off Eddie’s rally and is clearly responsible for the result. Even moreso than the Chris Hero matches (the best of which are just as good as this), this is the ultimate Eddie Kingston character match. He’s right, he earns the respect of everyone but the guy he, at one point, wanted it from, he gets the big moral victory, but he loses. In the entire history of professional wrestling, only Toshiaki Kawada may be a better loser than Eddie Kingston.

****

The best thing I can say about this series is that it completely defines who they are. Every aspect of Claudio Castagnoli and Eddie Kingston is on display in these three matches. Throughout his career, Claudio (and later Cesaro) had every physical gift, but never had the heart of some of his contemporaries, and always wound up taking the easy way out. It’s helped him at times just as much as it’s hurt him, but there’s a throughline. He’s repeatedly struggled when pushed and eventually he’s either reverted to these shortcuts, or he’s fallen short. Kingston has always been rough and mean and gotten in his own way. At the same time, there’s very few people in wrestling I associate with the idea of a moral victory than Eddie Kingston.

To put a cap on this, Eddie gets the microphone and says he doesn’t respect him. Eddie says he’s fooled all these people, but he hasn’t fooled him. Eddie says just like Claudio’s former partner, he’s shady and dirty, and he’ll never have his respect. Eddie hits him with the Backfist to the Future and leaves. As he leaves, Eddie is picked up by the camera saying he knows who Claudio really is.

Later that night, Claudio Castagnoli formed the BDK, CHIKARA’s biggest and perhaps most famous heel stable. It was the culmination of years of booking, in one of those hyper intricate CHIKARA things that completely paid off. It carried the company through 2010 and some of 2011, with a significant portion of the story being Eddie Kingston trying to chase down Claudio Castagnoli again, but being avoided, distracted, or stopped short of the match for a long time. They had another singles match eventually, and Eddie didn’t win.

This isn’t a story where he gets to win, not against Claudio. It’s ultimately a set up for one of the most fulfilling and reaffirming moments in wrestling history, where he finally does make good. I can’t imagine writing this blog and not getting there at some point, but this isn’t that story. The point is that within an hour, Eddie Kingston was right. He was right at the time, but by the end of the night, everyone came to knew what he knew.

Eddie was right all along, and it absolutely didn’t matter.

Arguably CHIKARA’s finest hour.

Claudio Castagnoli vs. Eddie Kingston, CHIKARA Young Lions Cup VII Night Three (8/16/2009)

Claudio takes the pre-match backstage interview this time, and like Eddie did in May, he sets the tone. Claudio says just because he respects Kingston’s talent, doesn’t mean he respects him, and calls him a street thug, while he is a “true” athlete. Claudio’s been the picture of class and civility in CHIKARA since he left the Kings of Wrestling in 2007, so to have just one loss bring something this ugly out of him is a great little bit.

Like in May, the promo sets the tone for the match, and it’s something I appreciate so much a decade later, when that doesn’t really happen much anymore. Claudio rushes Eddie to start, and forces him onto the mat, and he’s far from casual now. He eats Eddie up, and while you could argue that he did that early on in their first match of the year, it feels like it’s something he’s now making a direct point of. Eddie rolls outside and while it doesn’t seem like he’s trying to bait Claudio outside, he does take advantage of it and uses his surroundings to get an opening that he couldn’t get on his own. He’s more dominant after that, and much more dominant than he was at any point in May. There’s an argument to be made that this loses something because Eddie isn’t fighting from underneath as much, but I liked it even more because of that. As great as that was, this has something even more interesting to me, as Kingston fights harder and gets nastier and meaner. Claudio’s been beaten now, and he’s fighting to hang onto whatever he gained. Claudio’s maybe revealed that he’s never going to respect Eddie Kingston anyways, so he no longer seems concerned about more than that. On top of that, he’s armed now with the knowledge that he CAN beat Claudio, when he never had before.

Eddie goes to the trip and Oklahoma Roll when Claudio begins bombing him out, but it fails. Claudio lights him up after that, and he’s now the one using pieces of offense he doesn’t normally do. He does a bicycle knee here years back when that was inventive, and hurls Eddie around over and over. Kingston isn’t selling an emotion this time so much as exhaustion and suffering, but he does just as well with that. He’s dead on his feet, but escapes the final Ricola Bomb into the Backfist to the Future and then a Backdrop Driver. Claudio is able to roll outside, and Eddie MAYBE has the count out, but he decides he wants a real win to really put a period on the sentence and win 2-0. He tries a shoulderblock off the apron but Claudio ducks and Eddie eats shit. Claudio’s able to pull himself in before the twenty count, and he wins.

Claudio set out to get his win back and prove the fluke, and that a real wrestler always beats a street thug like Eddie Kingston. He had his way with him and eventually won, it’s not a victory he can be happy with at all. Eddie loses, but gets the moral victory. Claudio gets his win back but can only say now that Eddie Kingston beat himself. Two matches in a row now where someone sets out for a certain type of victory,but fails to get it and has to settle for a win where the only solace is how mad it makes the other.

Everything a sequel should be in wrestling, improving on the original and continuing the story in a really interesting way, while still leaving so much on the table.

***1/2

Claudio Castagnoli vs. Eddie Kingston, CHIKARA Aniversario Yang (5/24/2009)

The first of three matches they’ll have in 2009 that I intend on covering.

Eddie perfectly lays the stage for what they’re trying to do in a backstage promo. He talks about Claudio beating him the previous November and it being no surprise or shame to him, but he was embarrassed when Claudio didn’t even shake his hand and say “good job” or anything, so in his pain, he wants to humble someone he used to consider a friend but now has a strained relationship. It’s a really grounded story, but it’s also a really interesting and unique one that you don’t often see in wrestling, certainly not with a character as relatable as Eddie Kingston.

The best thing about Eddie Kingston is how expressive he is, so the story and the relationship between them is something that pours out of this from the opening matwork. Eddie is gritting his teeth and trying so hard, while Claudio appears bored. What Eddie has to pour his heart and soul into is something that Claudio couldn’t care less about. Eddie gets hot first and slaps him when Claudio is being a little too casual, so Claudio turns it on and begins punishing him for that. It breaks down completely, and while that sort of thing usually develops longer into a match with a story like this, it’s cool that it happens pretty much immediately here. Claudio continues to go through the motions whenever he’s in control, because it’s all he has to do to regain control and keep Eddie in pain, but Eddie goes all over the place. The most notable change of pace for him is a big Tope, but he also breaks out a Sliding D (before he regularly did thaT), and a Hashimoto kind of leaping DDT.

The match drags some in transition from the middle to final third, but they pick it up a lot at the end. They go back to the well that’s worked successfully so far, as Eddie tries to go right at Claudio and keeps getting rocked. Eddie being who he is, he’d obviously love to humble Claudio in this more direct way, but he can’t. Claudio again proves his might in the same way that led him to a victory in November 2008, but Eddie’s tougher and maybe cagier than to Castagnoli, and he trips him out of nowhere before grabbing an Oklahoma Roll for the win. Not stunning that Eddie Kingston wins, but a surprise that he wins like that.

Not the kind of win Eddie Kingston set out for, but he humiliates Claudio all the same and maybe even moreso than with the sort of victory Kingston would usually go after. Tremendous start to a trilogy.

***1/4